The higher angels—love, generosity, patience, kindness— don’t just happen by themselves. You have to give rise to them as an act of will, and this is a lifelong study. If you’ve ever had the pleasure to meet a person who has mastered this study you will feel the complete absence of greed, of jealousy, of envy. They’re just not there; all you feel is a quality of luminosity.

This may seem like an abstract proposition to you, so you’ll go out and do whatever you do in the privacy of your own home and that’s fine. But at the moment of death, it matters; the exact weight of every ounce of the poisons of envy, of jealousy, of greed, will rise and it’s not pleasant. You can deny the presence of these poisons in life, but you can’t deny them in death. The intention of every action is measured, and there comes a day of reckoning.